Craig Eastland

Craig Eastland received his BFA in Illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1988. He has exhibited numerous times in Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island and New Jersey.

"For the last two years, my work has focused on neglected and unseen corners of America. Using Google Maps Street View and other data sources, I have attempted to use landscape to illuminate a variety of ills: incarceration in Brooklyn, foreclosures in California and deaths caused by Hurricane Katrina," said Eastland.

Artist Statement

On a technical level, I have been exploring new ways to use, combine and intensify color. Then, I had a dream about Gilligan’s Island. Despite some worry about being self-indulgently whimsical, I decided to let my unconscious lead, and abandoned landscape to focus instead on the vapid, mid-century vaudeville of one of my generation’s ur-narratives. And in that dramatized, flood lit world I found echoes of famous compositions – Cezanne’s card players, Millet’s gleaners and others.

Time will tell if these paintings are a step forward, a weird tangent or a little of both.